Hello,
first, a happy new year to everyone.
@Alan Thank you for your very detailed explanation.
As already described, my laser rangemeter works perfectly for snow depth measurement. That's the way an professional automatic weather station does it and this was the reason I tried to get the laser rangemeter.
Here you can see for example the snow depth measurement of the weather station on chasseral, suisse.
![[Image: _dsc9418.jpg]](https://picload.org/thumbnail/ddairlwi/_dsc9418.jpg)
Concerning the reflectivity of snow, I found a scientific paper here.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p000147.pdf
I use a duty cycle of 1/300. I do a measurement every 5 minutes which takes about 1 second.
I never calculated it, but I could not notice any burned hole in the snow. That's why I assume the energy which is absorbed within the snow in one second is not sufficent to melt it and in the next 300s pause it is spread again.
I had never problems with the device itself, it is in use the second winternow and it works fine with temperatures up to -20°C. I do not have any heating element.
I have wired power at my sending unit, so energy is not problem for me, but the manual said it can take up to 1000 measurements with 3AAA batterys. So it would last 3,5 days when you take a measurement every 5 minutes. Since the snow hight does not change that quickly you could do a measurement every hour.
Summarizing it would be best to build a separate distance finder board which supports a ultrasonic measurement to determine waterlevel (i've never made any thoughts of this, but I have read somewhere that here mostly ultrasonic devices are used) and laser measurement for snow depth. The measured values are then given via I2C to a TX Unit.
first, a happy new year to everyone.
@Alan Thank you for your very detailed explanation.
As already described, my laser rangemeter works perfectly for snow depth measurement. That's the way an professional automatic weather station does it and this was the reason I tried to get the laser rangemeter.
Here you can see for example the snow depth measurement of the weather station on chasseral, suisse.
![[Image: _dsc9418.jpg]](https://picload.org/view/ddairlwi/_dsc9418.jpg.html)
Concerning the reflectivity of snow, I found a scientific paper here.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p000147.pdf
I use a duty cycle of 1/300. I do a measurement every 5 minutes which takes about 1 second.
I never calculated it, but I could not notice any burned hole in the snow. That's why I assume the energy which is absorbed within the snow in one second is not sufficent to melt it and in the next 300s pause it is spread again.
I had never problems with the device itself, it is in use the second winternow and it works fine with temperatures up to -20°C. I do not have any heating element.
I have wired power at my sending unit, so energy is not problem for me, but the manual said it can take up to 1000 measurements with 3AAA batterys. So it would last 3,5 days when you take a measurement every 5 minutes. Since the snow hight does not change that quickly you could do a measurement every hour.
Summarizing it would be best to build a separate distance finder board which supports a ultrasonic measurement to determine waterlevel (i've never made any thoughts of this, but I have read somewhere that here mostly ultrasonic devices are used) and laser measurement for snow depth. The measured values are then given via I2C to a TX Unit.